Which is better: elite program at a so-so school or elite school with a so-so program?

juillet
Mon, 06 Mar 2017 17:55:39 +0000

@ANormalSeniorGuy

@prezbucky I think you are correct. My problem with @juillet 's post is that it includes graduate programs, as well as things that I personally believe should not be considered in the ranking: Sports, location, and other intangibles. That is why I UT Austin and UIUC are so-so, because they get massive boosts off of those factors, and if we looked at undergraduate academics only then ivys are the best.

Neither of the rankings I cited consider sports or location in their methodology. The QS methodology can be found [url=https://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings/methodology]here[/url], and the THE ranking methodology can be found [url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/methodology-world-university-rankings-2016-2017#survey-answer]here[/url].

I’d like to point out, as I have before, that U.S. News started ranking universities to sell magazines. Their sales were flagging when they started ranking universities and they were hoping the ranking would help them move units. That alone doesn’t mean that their rankings are invalid - and I’m certainly not arguing that they are more or less valid than THE or QS. What I am saying, though, is that U.S. News has a vested interest in their rankings reflecting what people already believe about colleges and universities in the U.S. Their methodology is filled with proxy variables that favor private universities that select wealthy, high-scoring students. For example, such as the percentage of students who return for their sophomore year and the percentage of alumni who give to the university. They offer that these are good proxies for student satisfaction, but the truth is (especially at public universities) there are so many more reasons why a student might not return for their second year or give money.

It’ll be interesting to see if I get an answer here: are any of the people who are posting things like “you can get into investment banking from _______ or ________” actually experienced in the real world to say that?

When I make those statements on these forums, it’s usually based on published data or knowing personally of people who have made it to the desired job from a named school or a peer school. In this case, it’s demostrably factual that “[one] can get to investment banking from UT-Austin,” as they have [url=https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/BBA/Career-Services/BBA-Statistics#profile-BBA-Full-Time-Profile]data[/url] on their website that reflects that. 12% of UT-Austin’s BBA graduates go into investment banking (and a further 27% go into consulting). UIUC says that 30% of their undergraduate business graduates go into “financial services,” which I assume includes both investment banking and commercial banking as well as other assorted finance-related careers.

The question of whether going somewhere like Emory or WUSTL makes you more likely to go into investment banking is a different one, but one that doesn’t seem to be true. Emory says 27% of Goizueta BBA graduates go into financial services. Similarly, WUSTL says that about 24% of their students go into “financial services”, with only 9% of that being investment banking. If you add UT’s financial services + ibanking + commercial banking, you get about 24%, which isn’t significantly different from Goizueta’s, WUSTL’s or UIUC’s totals, and 12% isn’t necessarily significantly different from 9% (by which I mean the difference could be due to yearly fluctuation and not an actual difference).

There’s a third question, of whether going somewhere like Emory or WUSTL makes you more likely to go into banking on Wall Street than UIUC or UT-Austin. That may very well be true. Only about 16% of UIUC’s grads in finance work outside of Illinois (specific region isn’t given); the figure is about 22% for UT, with only 6% going to the Northeast. About 19% of WUSTL graduates and a whopping 45% of Emory graduates end up in the Northeast. I think it’s safe to say that the difference between the single-digit amounts and WUSTL’s and Emory’s much bigger amounts are about something more than chance (although whether that chance is ability to get in or desire to stay closer to home is debatable.)